Not much happened this week, or so it seemed as compared to the newness of the weeks’ prior. I had gotten the routine of the days down and was comfortable in my environment. It seemed as though New York life had made a place for me. Especially at work, I was in my comfort zone. I walked in every morning or afternoon, depending on the day, logged into the server and sent out an email asking the team what, if anything, they needed my help on. Sometimes emails came back right away saying, “glad you’re here, can you help me with…” other times I sat there, for what seemed like hours, reading and catching up on any news I had missed, just in case I got asked to help with something. I didn’t want to be unaware of what was going on.
Monday slowly crept by. Others seemed to be busy but there was very little extra work to do. I ran a couple of errands, did a few web rolls, and answered a few phone calls. Nothing to exciting. Come Tuesday, I thought things have to speed up today based on the velocity of work I had done yesterday. Yet, nothing seemed to come my way until mid-day. We had heard last week, right before I headed out to Dallas, that Christiane was leaving CNN. She had taken on an offer with ABC to anchor the evening news there. It was a hard transition for many at CNN, considering Amanpour has been with the network for 27 years. Yet, the transition seemed necessary for her personal life to which she had devoted very little time over the last few decades.
The drastic changes at the Amanpour show, that come with the elimination of an entire show and its team, eventually had a direct impact on the Campbell Brown show. Our executive producer who makes the final decisions on hiring and whom we had been getting to know over the last few months, was leaving the show to be replaced by the producer of the Amanpour show. Our EP was actually getting promoted to Director of evening programming to be based out of Atlanta. However, this was bitter news for us, the interns. All the work we had done and everything she had seen happen were gone with her. We now had to start all over with a new Executive Producer.
I didn’t realize this at the time, but it ended up being a positive for me. Katherine O’Hearn, the EP for the Amanpour show who was now taking over the Campbell Brown show, actually remembered me! I had initially wanted to intern on that show and got an offer, one day after Campbell Brown made me an offer. According to protocol, they could not then take me away from the Campbell Brown show; however, I could work on the Amanpour show the days I wasn’t at CB. However, those fell few and far between. But Katherine remembered me from those few times. The first day she was on the CB show, I was asked to help her organize her office. When she came back about 45 minutes later, I had all her files organized alphabetically; I had organized her drawers according to the framework she left, and had uncluttered all the associated mess. She was very happy with me and said, “I remember your application for the Amanpour show. Wish you had been part of our permanent team there. I like your attitude even when you’re given tasks which I’m sure aren’t the reason you took the internship.” As a sort of reward, she sent me down to watch the final taping of the Amanpour show, saying she needed a few of her things as she winked at me from the corner of her eye. A wide smile spread across my face. When I went downstairs and met Christiane, I felt elated to be in the presence of my life-long, professional role model.
The rest of the week went by without too much to do, however, it was exciting to know that the EP knew my name and appreciated my attitude. I hope to keep it up!
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